Socialist Alternative member and regular Red Flag contributor Tom Bramble has been recognised by the National Tertiary Education Union for his tireless union activism at the University of Queensland.

Tom, who is retiring at the end of the year, was given the NTEU’s merit award at its recent national conference.

The motion moved at the conference noted: “On the branch committee, Tom was constantly pushing from the left to promote greater branch activism. To his great credit, when he lost a vote on a decision (as sometimes happened), his will to do the branch’s work never slackened.

“Especially during industrial action, no picket line was too early in the morning for Tom, and he was indefatigable at postering, speaking, and agitating, and organising others to do so. During a number of closely contested bargaining rounds, Tom was prominent in several rounds of industrial action, and his was a consistent voice warning against too much compromise with management.”

Andrew Bonnell, who moved the motion, recalled one story which sums up Tom’s approach well: “I remember one of the first NTEU meetings I attended at UQ, during the 1999-2001 bargaining round, when a couple of grey-bearded academics at the back of the lecture theatre muttered that they thought they had come to teach at a world-class university but they were now being treated like coal-miners.

“Tom instantly turned around and retorted: ‘Well, start acting like one’. Excellent advice, which I’ve never forgotten.”